[declan_roberts]

I don't understand flock cameras in high crime areas. Every time somebody commits a heinous crime it's always like "they were arrested 72 times and were well known by the police"

What's the point in helping the police catch criminals when they don't do anything after the fact!

[undersuit]

Maybe the police are part of the problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LASD_deputy_gangs

[ksymph]

Main article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gangs_in_the_Los_Angeles_Count...

[ux266478]

Definitely, but they represent the opposite problem. The thing about the LASD and LAPD is that they are... extrajudicial. It's not "They catch a gang member and do nothing", but rather "They arrest a gang member with no valid reason to do so, and tortured/killed them over some street shit." Sometimes it's not a gang member at all. The end of the CRASH unit started when an officer thought he'd flash gang signs and try to kill a plainclothes officer, all in a fit of road rage. Who knows how many times that happened to a random civilian and it got blamed on gangbangers (who happened to not be police)

[loeg]

The problem GP is describing is mostly with the courts, not the cops.

[chaps]

Friend, that's a.... deep, deep mischaracterization of how the courts work. The cops, prosecutors and judges have deep relationship with each other. Yes, these are "courts problems", but you can't have these courts problems without cops, without prosecutors, without judges, etc.

Ask yourself: why do public defenders have a tiny fraction of the budget of prosecutors?

[mminer237]

Police don't do anything after the fact. The problem is with attorneys general and/or judges either not prosecuting people or giving them too light of sentences. All police do is arrest and collect evidence, and they're generally even more frustrated by the problem than most people.

[gxs]

Because this kind of stuff is used for way beyond this

It’s used for surveillance in the truest sense

Heaven forbid you are on someone’s watchlist, they will just track your movement across the city

This isn’t some fake CSI pop dream - this kind of tech isn’t used to catch the people breaking into your house

[morkalork]

Just going to leave this here as an example use-case:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/05/she-got-abortion-so-te...

[the_real_cher]

Also used by repo men to track people behind on payments

[skeptic_ai]

Have you ever looked in who is the police? How they become police in first place? Like how police even started to be police in the first place. Is quite a ride and I can see many similarities to organized gangs.

[deepsun]

Too few prosecutors. Police only arrests, but the real job is done by prosecutors. However, there's a global shortage of them, and cities don't hire more. I don't know whether that's a popular job nowadays.

So without proper charges judge cannot do anything but release. Police cannot do anything but arrest.

Prosecutors are the main line of defense (defending public from criminals).

[MisterMower]

No, it’s not a quantity issue, it’s a quality issue.

DAs used to go after particularly egregious offenders and throw the book at them. This creates incentive effects for all the other would be criminals. It doesn’t take all that much enforcement before criminals get the idea and stop or are put in jail for decades.

Instead we have prosecutors going after all the wrong kinds of crime. Murderers are getting no cash bail while guys who cut down a tree in their yard are getting visits from the police and court summons for non-crimes.

This is intentional policy from DA offices. Pay attention next time your DA is up for reelection, they impact your quality of life far more than your representatives.

[declan_roberts]

I don't believe at all this is from a lack of funds. The only thing that lacks here is the desire to put criminals in prison.

[chaps]

And public defenders are the main line of defense against prosecutors yet prosecution budgets are significantly higher.

[copper-float]

These high crime areas are predominantly in blue counties/states, and liberal judges are typically soft on crime.

[nucleogenesis]

The US has the highest per-capita rate of imprisonment I think we’re plenty “hard on crime”. What we lack is a principled stance that Americans deserve basic dignity and access to things that make people live less violent lives. It’s no secret that poverty is the key contributor to one’s likelihood of being in prison.

People who are “soft on crime”, practically speaking, are the people and politicians so committed to dehumanizing others that they’d rather watch their neighbors wallow in poverty or rot in jail than to actually do something to address the root causes (the foremost of which being the aforementioned societal dehumanization of the poor).

[NoImmatureAdHom]

Populations across the world are not comparable in a variety of ways, including in a "best-case" base criminality rate. So you can't compare per-capital rates of imprisonment and go, "Gee, that's high in Country X compared to Country Y and Country Z".

There's an old saw: A Scandinavian economist once said to Milton Friedman, ‘In Scandinavia, we have no poverty’. Milton Friedman replied, ‘That’s interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either’ [0]

0: https://iea.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/files/Sw...

N.B.: there was selection for the worse-off in those coming to the U.S.

[pessimizer]

> So you can't compare per-capital rates of imprisonment and go, "Gee, that's high in Country X compared to Country Y and Country Z".

That's an exceedingly weak defense for a country that imprisons 4x more people per-capita than China.

[NoImmatureAdHom]

It isn't.

China's murder rate is about 0.5 murders per 100,000 people per year, while South Africa's is 44 per 100,000 people per year (assuming both countries report honest statistics). That's an 88x difference between two large countries. [0]

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...

[abeyer]

> the people and politicians so committed to dehumanizing others that they’d rather watch their neighbors wallow in poverty or rot in jail than to actually do something to address the root causes

This is exactly the false dichotomy that people engaging in this like to play up. It's not an either/or situation... we can and should _both_ address root causes to avoid crime where we can _and_ punish crime when we must.

[deepsun]

Judges are not soft, it's just liberal cities don't hire enough prosecutors. So judges never receive properly investigated charges, and can do nothing but acquit. Prosecutors defend public (us) from criminals, but for some reason are neglected.

[sph]

> soft on crime

I cannot take these words seriously since Trump tweeted that the Pope is weak on crime, and it’s the most retarded thing I’ve ever heard.

The US is not a serious country any more.

[stackghost]

>liberal judges are typically soft on crime.

You're going to need to back that claim up with statistics

[Varelion]

Easily disproved. So much inaccurate malarky on this thread. I would assume it's bots AstroTurfing, if American zeitgeist wasn't already so demonstrably poisoned.

[copper-float]

I've lived in California my whole life, and I'm just basing it off my experiences over the years.

California enacted a law in 2014 that turned all theft under $950 into a misdemeanor instead of a felony (reverted last year). Theft became so common that police wouldn't even respond to theft calls unless it was over $950, which enboldened theives. During covid especially, entire stores would be looted and robbed constantly.

When people were caught, the judges would often give them minimal sentences, and release them over and over. Then the same people would commit more crimes because they knew the judges were lienent.

I'm not saying every single person fits into this box, but it's common enough to be recognized as a trend that happens in liberal areas. Los Angeles, Oakland are prime examples.

[mrguyorama]

>California enacted a law in 2014 that turned all theft under $950 into a misdemeanor instead of a felony (reverted last year)

So all states with $1000 Felony cutoffs or higher should have this issue, right?

So why don't they?

You know the National Retail Federation had to stop posting their annual shrink numbers after they demonstrated that shoplifting was not meaningfully higher than previous years.

[johnsmith1840]

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

Those other places are just lying they don't have clean streets and stores without bars over the windows they're secretly just like us we have the numbers to prove it!

[bflesch]

Someone is spending $500M per month on AI to generate grassroots support...

[copper-float]

I'm not AI, but thanks for the rudeness.

[AlexErrant]

My man, if your comments can't be distinguished from a bot's, you're no better than one. Also if you can't tell that your comment's unsubstantiated bait, you really need to go touch grass.

Everyone has an annecdote. "it's common enough to be recognized as a trend" is equally justification for racial profiling, and at least racial crime statistics are easily citable. And you still haven't even put forth that modicum of effort.

[copper-float]

Hi Alex,

I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't put words in my mouth. I never once suggested racial profiling as acceptable, and I wasn't insinuating it either. I know you were just using it as an adjacent example, but I don't appreciate that.

I'm just giving my experiences man, I lived in Los Angeles for years. Have you ever been here or lived here? There is very little respect for the law because the law is not enforced. I'm not saying I have all the answers, it's just what I've noticed.

I'm not trying to be rude, and I'm not a stupid bot. Am I not allowed to have a point of view and express it?